Senegal underlined their TotalEnergies CAF AFCON title credentials with a commanding 3-0 victory over Benin in their final Group D encounter, in an entertaining contest played in Tangiers on Tuesday evening.

The former African champions made a purposeful start and were rewarded in the 38th minute, when Abdoulaye Seckrose highest to power home a header from Krépin Diatta’s well-delivered set piece, giving Senegal a deserved lead at the interval.

Benin showed greater urgency after the restart, testing Édouard Mendy through efforts from Aiyegun Tosin and Junior Olaïtan, but Senegal remained well organised at the back and clinical in their attacking play.

Senegal doubled their advantage in the 62nd minute, with star forward Sadio Mané turning provider, slipping a neat pass into the area for Habib Diallo, who made no mistake with a composed left-footed finish from close range.

The match took a dramatic turn in the 71st minute when captain Kalidou Koulibaly was shown a red card following a VAR review, forcing Senegal to see out the contest with ten men for the final quarter of an hour.

Benin pushed forward in search of a response and forced Mendy into a series of saves, but their hopes were extinguished deep into stoppage time.

In the 97th minute, substitute Cherif Ndiaye calmly converted from the penalty spot after Ibrahim Mbaye was brought down in the area, sealing a comprehensive scoreline.

The result sees Senegal finish top of Group D, while Benin, despite the defeat, progress to the Round of 16 as one of the best third-placed teams.

Group D concludes with Senegal at the top, followed by DR Congo who cruised past Botswana in a simultaneous match along with Benin as one of the best third place finishers.

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MOM Abdoulaye Seck

"I am delighted to have won the award but for me it was a collective team effort that led to this. We knew from the start that the match was not going to be easy because Benin came out to fight. But the effort of everyone ensured that we secured this victory despite playing with ten men later on in the game."

Benin coach Gernot Rohr:

"This was a very difficult match against a highly experienced team like Senegal. Even though they were down to ten men it was difficult to break through their defence because they were compact. We also wanted to avoid a situation where we could get some cards that would have ruled out some of our players in the knock out stage and this made us a bit cautious. These are some of the mistakes we will correct before we play in the knockout stage and we will fight to go as far as possible in the competition."

Senegal coach Pape Thiaw:

"The players deserve all the praise for their performance in this difficult match that we played with ten men for some parts of the game. We faced a very determined Benin team but we managed to achieve our main objective of finishing top of the group. Our next objective is to correct the mistakes we made in our group stage match before we go into the Round of 16 because on that stage there will be no rooms for errors which will be published. We will use the next few days to address these problems."